Dear America,
The true fight has always been good vs evil, not left vs right. When both sides try to blame each other we are distracted from the fact that the greatest evil will hurt us all indiscriminately. Until we come together, there is no “good side”. Disagreeing with each other has not stopped us from agreeing that things need to change. Until we come together, the answer of who is behind our demise, distraction, and division will not be revealed. Even then, all we may know is that the enemy is not each other.
At the end of the day, all Americans can agree that we just want to live freely and happily. That requires compromise and compromise requires conversation. Not unmoderated debates between thought leaders whose income relies on how many people they grift each month, but genuine conversations between real people. Conversations about personal experiences. Conversations motivated by the desire to understand the other person for who they are as an individual, the same way we want others to understand us.
Scripture tells us that God gave humans dominion over the Earth. I believe that this was done because of our capacity to love and show compassion to one another. We are blessed with the ability to perceive and analyze the world and those we share it with both compassionately and rationally. It is our God given responsibility to utilize the advanced faculties of logical thinking and empathy together. Logic without empathy is cold, empathy without logic is stagnant. The assertiveness of logic motivates us to make changes inspired by what we discover through empathy. Ideas that appear polar opposite work together in harmony, the same way we are designed to.
Different doesn’t mean wrong. There are an infinite number of math problems that will give you a solution of 1. Rather than invalidating the problems that we perceive as elementary or less complex, we should celebrate our ability to discover common ground as one. Things are important to us for different reasons, usually this is caused by our unique life experiences. Learning more about others' individual life experiences, rather than relying on generalizations, allows us to see that our different problems all have the same desired outcome: a world where differences are celebrated instead of critiqued and punished.
I propose that we stop allowing the crimes that we have committed against each other to distract us from the crimes that are being committed against humanity as a whole. We are smart enough to be able to acknowledge past grievances with each other while also learning from them. This requires compromise and compromise requires conversation motivated by the prioritization of widespread unity over temporary personal discomfort.
Once we get past our differences, we can start having the bigger and better discussions that will actually create a change we can all benefit from.
I leave you with three things that have helped me prioritize unity over division:
Trust that a different opinion is not an attack or an invalidation of your opinion. Individual truth is subjective but that does not make it any less important than what is presented as objective fact.
Commit to your morals and notice inconsistencies in your own thought patterns, not others. Remaining consistent is key to noticing distractions and attempts to divide us.
Understand that there are more than one reason why people believe what they do and feel what they feel. No one group of people is a monolith, get to know people for who they are.
Thank you for your time and thank you for existing,
Truth In Nonsense
